I’ve just finished reading the book Kyoto 2 by Oliver Tickell. I’m always interested in the politics and economics of climate change solutions. The field of work I’m involved in with building efficiency offers a small part of the answer, but it is generally accepted that efficiency alone will not necessarily result in reductions in carbon emissions (because of the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate), so I’m always interested in how my field of work might fit into a larger solution. The book offers a comprehensive vision of how climate change should be tackled, politically and economically, and gives answers to many questions that had nagged at me about how previously suggested systems like “Contraction and Convergence” might work. Tickell’s work is certainly the best solution I have read, but it still leaves a burning question that I can’t yet answer. If we know what needs to be done, how on earth do we go about getting it done?
Recently climate change protestors managed to break into Stansted airport and delay flights. This sort of action provokes different reactions from different people. Personally I haven't so far got involved in this sort of action because I feel uncomfortable with the disruption it causes to normal people’s lives; it seems likely to alienate large numbers of people. There is always a risk that most or many people watching coverage of events like this will write off protestors as eccentric hippies because of their extreme actions, when in fact many of them are intelligent people taking a considered, pragmatic view of the science and feeling desperately at a loss for what can be done to bring about change.
I met with some in laws recently, and we discussed how much change the previous generation had seen – space exploration, motorised personal transport, international flights, computer technology etc, and that by comparison their own generation had experienced few paradigm shifts in the way things are done (they are in their 70s). It seems obvious to me that our generation, or the generation to follow ours, will necessarily experience huge changes, and these changes may dwarf those seen in the industrial revolution, or those brought about by harnessing the power of fossil fuels. These changes will either be through a conscious choice to reduce global carbon emissions to the levels demanded by the most up to date science and undergo a "green revolution", or through continuing on our current course and accepting the extremely severe consequences that this will bring. We stand now in a position where we can still choose the most planned and least disruptive course of action – a planned shift to an economy that prices pollution, an infrastructure that does more with less energy and a modal shift in the generation of energy towards carbon free technologies. The mistake most people make when arguing against these changes – because they believe they will be too disruptive, too expensive or too technologically difficult – is that they assume that business as usual is a viable option. It is certainly a viable option to continue emitting greenhouse gases at a rate far in excess of our planet's ability to absorb them, but this will not result, in the medium to long term, in a continuation of the high standard of living we currently enjoy. On the contary it is likely to result in a massive drop in average global living standards. As environmentalists we need to move past our image as killjoys and spoilsports and persuade people that tackling climate change is the way forward that offers least hardship and most opportunity.
